Letter from Dean Wendt - Summer 2018

After completing my first year as dean, I want to say how grateful I am to work with such a dedicated and talented group of students, staff and faculty. I’m proud of what the college has accomplished this year, and I’m especially proud of the class of 2018's more than 600 graduates.

Two of our seniors received the premier award for graduate students in the sciences, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. They competed against those already in the first year of a doctoral program. Thanks to the undergraduate research they did at Cal Poly, they succeeded.

The students’ hard work and academic achievement is matched by the excellence of faculty and staff. Physics Professor Stephanie Wissel received an NSF CAREER award that recognizes the top early career faculty in the country. Suzanne Phelan, who directs the Center for Health Research, was honored with the prestigious CSU Wang Family Excellence Award for Outstanding Faculty Scholarship.

Stephanie aims to recruit students who are underrepresented in physics to design, install and operate a telescope. Suzanne’s research focuses on healthy weight gain before, during and after pregnancy for women in low income populations. The Center for Health Research is also launching a mobile health unit that will provide free medical care to uninsured mothers, infants and young children.

I’m especially grateful for activities such as theirs in which faculty and staff make the extra effort to support our first generation students and those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. We will continue to commit resources to diversity and inclusion in all aspects of students’ education.

The College of Science and Mathematics is the people who compose it. For each of the stories here, there are many others that tell how our students, faculty and staff are making a difference.

We wish our newest alumni the best in their new careers in a variety of fields from health to education to industry. As bright as their stars are now, this is only the beginning of their contributions to our state, nation and world. I know they will continue to make us Cal Poly Proud.

Dean Wendt, Dean
College of Science & Mathematics
dwendt@calpoly.edu